What are the individual 0, 1, 2, "letters" etc. in numbers called? I know the word "digits", I've seen "n-figure salary", and Google translation (from German "Stellen"), when used in a sentence, yields "places" ("How many places does this number have?"). And exactly when is the English cognate of our German word "Ziffer", "cypher", used? Because "Ziffer" really means "digit" in English, I think.

4 Answers
4

"Digit" refers to the characters used to write out a number. "Places" refers to the number and location of digits needed to write out the number. "n-figure" is simply a count of the digits needed ignoring any fractional part.

1,234 - Uses digits 1, 2, 3 and 4; has four places; is a 4-figure number
100,111 - Uses digits 0 and 1; has 6 places; is a 6-figure number
905.001 - Uses digits 0, 1, 5 and 9; has 6 places; is a 3-figure number

As a reminder: , is used to split thousands, millions and so on. . is used to split of the decimal places. The term "places" is often used to specify only the decimal places:

I'm not familiar with the "n-figure" phrase, but would add one more term: significant digits, where your examples have 4, 6, and 6 significant digit respectively.
–
JeffSaholApr 29 '11 at 18:59

1

I would rephrase your final statement as "accurate to the 1/1000th place", or "... the one-thousandths place". (After all, by your own definition, the number 905.001 only has 6 places, not a thousand.)
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HellionApr 30 '11 at 3:53

If you are talking about the individual "letters", it would have to be a digit, which has the no positional or directional reference. Both "n-figure salary" and "places" do not refer to the individual representation of the letter, but are related to the total number of digits.